Six years after telling impeachment investigators about Donald Trump's scheme to gin up politically motivated investigations in Ukraine, former White House insider Lev Parnas says he's been listening into MAGA-world conversations about how to outrun the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Parnas says one name stands out most for him in the chatter: Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, whose relative silence, save for a cryptic social media post, seems off-brand.
“I saw the formation of Dan Bongino when he was nobody — when in 2015 and ‘16, [he] was just rah-rah-rah, going into MAGA — and he then turned to his podcast and everything… most of it was centered around the Epstein stuff,” Parnas said.
Recurring themes in Bongino’s podcasts, Parnas said, were “the Deep State,” “the Clintons” and “child trafficking.”
“This is where QAnon came from,” Parnas said.
Now that Bongino occupies the second highest position in the FBI, he’s largely stayed behind the scenes of the White House and Justice Department’s crisis management strategy. His name didn’t appear on the list of five people meant to huddle for a reported dinner meeting: Vice President J.D. Vance, chief of staff Susie Wiles, FBI director Kash Patel, and Attorney General Pam Bondi. (Vance denied planning to meet about “the Epstein situation,” without disputing that there was an anticipated meeting.)
After that huddle reportedly got canceled, three of the officials reportedly met privately: Vance, Patel and Bondi. Three administration officials told CNN that they believe Bongino “will likely eventually leave his post and return to hosting his podcast once the Epstein blowback subsides.”
Parnas believes Trump needs Bongino’s buy-in.
“He could blow it all up, and they can't do it without him on board,” Parnas said. “So just think about the dilemma they're having… which is why I'm ringing the bell.”
In the full 41-minute conversation, Parnas and I look back on Trump’s first impeachment, the revisionist history of Russia’s attack on the 2016 presidential election, and many other topics.
A reporter’s notebook
When I covered Trump’s first impeachment on Capitol Hill in 2019, Lev Parnas seemed to know everybody in MAGA-world, but few would admit to knowing him after he started cooperating with the House’s inquiry. Routinely, I would confront Republican lawmakers about photographs and campaign contributions tying them to Parnas, only to watch several dodge and deflect.
Then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy grew so frustrated with my questions on the topic that his testy responses became the subject of stories in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
But Parnas had the pictures and paper trail backing up his accounts, not only on Ukraine.
In my joint investigation with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Lev Parnas became a key named source of our reporting exposing oligarchs, lobbyists, and alleged crooks behind Trump’s relationship to the Turkish government. The story was filled with his photographs and messages with the key players. He also shared his account of backchannel negotiations involving Venezuela and later turned his exploits observing Rudy Giuliani’s foreign policy dealings into a book called “Shadow Diplomacy.”
In this interview, Lev says he still has an ear into Trump-world and insights into the shadowy side of the administration’s actions on the world stage.
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